


Lie Down on the Wire

by MollyC



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Divergent, Depiction of torture, Gen, Mind Control, Post CA:TWS, Seriously Hydra are bad people, Trauma, not AOU compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 00:57:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 12,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5314004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MollyC/pseuds/MollyC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm not here to kill you," the Winter Soldier said.  "Hydra has Steve."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Six days after the Insight Crash, Sam Wilson walked out of the bathroom to find the Winter Soldier standing in his living room.

" _Holy fucking shit_ ," he yelped, and made a break for the bedroom, wondering as he went how far he was going to get before he got shot. Or stabbed. Or just crushed.

Except he reached the bedside table untouched and yanked open the drawer, which was...maybe not so surprising because there was no gun in it. He whirled and the Soldier stood in the door, holding up his 1911 (Sam had a thing for the classics), and Sam swallowed and promised himself he wasn't going to die without getting in one good hit. Just one.

"I'm not here to kill you," the Winter Soldier said, in a voice rusty with disuse. The statement was bald and surprising enough to override the adrenaline that sang in Sam's veins enough for him to think.

The Soldier wasn't holding the gun in firing position, and it wasn't actually like him to play with his targets, either—his style was all straightforward, efficient violence. He was wearing civilian clothing and his hair was pulled back, and it didn't look like he'd shaved since Sam had seen him last.

Sam swallowed again. "OK, that's what I like to hear," he said, and paused. The Winter Soldier didn't fill the silence. Finally Sam said, "Why are you here?"

"I need to know if you know where St—Captain Rogers is," the Soldier said, and wasn't that interesting phrasing.

Sam blinked in surprise and said slowly, "You can't seriously expect me to tell you where he is."

"I don't want you to tell me," the Soldier said, with a mild irritation that wasn't matched in his blank face. "I just need to know if _you_ know."

One of the things that made Sam good at his job was his ability to read people, and this—he would bet a year's pay that this was not the same person who had so methodically tried to kill him not a week ago. "No one knows," Sam said, fighting down his worry. "No one's heard from him since he told Hill to start the helicarrier attack. They dredged the shield out of the river, but if his body's down there they haven't found it yet."

For the first time the Winter Soldier's face showed something, and with astonishment Sam identified it as fear. "It's not. He was alive when I pulled him out." _Pulled him out?_ Sam thought. But before he could ask the Soldier went on, "Hydra has him."

* * *

Steve woke up sitting in a chair. In itself, that wasn't immediately alarming. What worried him was that he could tell his arms and legs were restrained, and there was an ache in his gut that said his memory of being shot, of Bucky shooting him, was not a dream. The voice in the back of his mind that sounded like Bucky said dryly, _How the hell do you keep getting yourself into these fixes?_ as Steve pried his eyes open.

The room was large and windowless, the walls covered in little metal doors—the safety deposit vault of a bank, he realized. More important was the woman standing at the foot of the chair. She was no one Steve knew, but she'd clearly been waiting for him to wake up. "Good," she said. "I was beginning to think we were going to have to relocate before we could get started."

"Where am I?" Steve demanded. There were other people in the room, several with guns and a man standing in front of a computer monitor.

"Take this, you'll want it," the woman said, and held out a piece of rubber he recognized as a bite guard. He could hear her heels tapping on the floor as she advanced until the thing was within his reach. He looked at it, and then up at her.

"Go to hell," he said.

She made a disappointed face. "I suppose you'll live without it," she said. "Go."

Something above his head began to whir and a metal framework like a nearly-complete circle rotated into Steve's field of vision. He started to struggle, but the restraints were strong enough to hold him, at least for the moment. The halo kept coming and then unfolded protrusions that settled over his face, and Steve had time to think _This reminds me of Howard's chamber_ before the world whited out into agony.


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn't exactly déjà vu, but Sam had to admit that standing in his kitchen frying eggs and listening to Natasha talk to a super soldier was bringing up some uncomfortable points of familiarity.

The Winter Soldier had told them to call him Barnes. He had washed up, even shaved while Natasha was en route from wherever Sam's terse phone call had summoned her, though from hearing the sound of the running water Sam thought there had been a bath, not a shower. Barnes' clothes were not perfectly clean, but he'd refused Sam's offer of loaners and didn't smell nearly bad enough for Sam to be interested in pushing it.

He had no illusions about how Barnes viewed him.

"I didn't know why I had to save him," Barnes was saying, staring at the cup of coffee Sam had made him. He'd even drunk some. Sam intended to insist that he ate, if he was too screwed up to understand on his own why he needed to. "I pulled him onto the shore, made sure he was breathing, and walked away." Natasha nodded. "The next day I...I saw his face on the side of a bus." Sam glanced at him and saw one of those faint expressions: remorse. "I went to the museum. I saw." He stopped. The hiss-crackle of the frying eggs was the loudest sound in the room. "I saw who I used to be. I sat in the projection room for almost three hours, remembering."

From the look on Natasha's face, that wasn't as simple as it sounded. Sam grimaced and flipped the eggs, one-two-three-four.  "I still don't have everything. I'm not sure everything I remember is true. But I remember Steve."

"How do you know Hydra has him?" Sam asked, flicking the burner off.

Barnes looked up and this expression was clearer; he might as well have been rolling his eyes at Sam's stupidity. "Because you don't," he said.

"We need to get some backup on this," Natasha said. "Clint's plane will be landing soon. And I think we should call Stark."

* * *

It took him a while to wake up, and he couldn't quite remember why that was unusual. He was lying on a thin mattress, not nearly comfortable but not a bare surface either, and his hands were tied together. So were his feet. It occurred to him as he came fully awake that he didn't have any idea where he was or where he was going—from the sound and feel he was in a vehicle.

He opened his eyes and discovered he was in a cage, a near-cube of bars that filled one end of a boxy room that was probably the back of a truck. It was just large enough for him to lie full-length. _This can't be good_ , he thought, but it felt reflexive, more something he ought to think than a really urgent concern. There were guards with guns on benches along the side walls; when he started trying to sit up they all turned to look at him. From the far end a woman stood, and he frowned. He remembered looking up at her from a chair that reclined like a dentist's, for a few seconds before...his mind winced away from the memory.

"I'm glad to see you're awake," the woman said, crouching to make their eyes nearly level. "Can you tell me your name?" She was pretty, he thought, with her dark curly hair caught up behind her head like that. Her blood-red lipstick was perfect for her.

He frowned in thought. Names flitted through his mind, _NatashaSamBuckyRumlowFurySteveMariaPiercePeggyKate_ , and he picked the one that seemed the most important. "Bucky," he said, trying not to let his voice rise in inquiry. It occurred to him that he should be worried that he wasn't sure. "Bucky Barnes."

The woman's eyebrows flicked up. "Is that so?" she said. "Interesting. Well, Mr. Barnes, you should get a little more rest. We have a long way to go and when we get there, you're going to be busy."

"Why am I handcuffed?" he asked.

She smiled. "You're a very strong man," she said. "We weren't sure how you'd act when you woke up. It was safer, for you and for us."

That seemed...reasonable? "What happened to me?"

Her smile broadened. "That's not important anymore.  All that's important now is your future."


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing Sam heard Tony Stark say in real life was, "It's fine, Romanoff, I don't even have to check with Pepper unless there are at least six zeros." And then Iron Man was in his damn kitchen, and Sam just...didn't have anything left to boggle about that with. His ability to freak out had gotten kinda dented by randomly meeting Captain America jogging and took a serious hole in the fuselage when two Avengers showed up asking for his help, and the arrival of the Winter—of Barnes basically shot it out of the sky entirely. So: Iron Man, in his kitchen. Moving on.  
  
"Speaking of it's fine," Stark continued, "why didn't I hear about any of this till it was too late to do anything but not get to DC until after the crashing was over?" He completely ignored Barnes, who stood against the wall with his arms crossed, looking exactly like the most dangerous person Sam had ever even thought about meeting. Even in hipster-worthy skinny jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt, both of them (naturally) black. The metal hand looked like a weird glove.  
  
"Three reasons," Natasha replied. "One, you were actually unconscious for the beginning of it—bad timing on that surgery, not that you had any way of knowing.  Two, SHIELD-slash-Hydra was watching you like a satellite-assisted hawk in one of the most surveilled cities in the world." Stark opened his mouth to object but Natasha overrode him. "And yes, you're good, you're the best, but you wouldn't've know we were coming and they might have been able to get onto us before you could lock down. Three," and she smiled grimly, "you helped with the Insight design, Tony."  
  
Stark looked taken aback, which was something Sam suspected didn't happen very often, and seemed to actually think about it—likely even rarer. Sam knew the type, so smart that it never occurred to them that they even  _could_  be wrong unless it was rubbed in their faces. In Stark's case, rich-kid syndrome certainly didn't help. "OK, that's—actually fair," Stark said. "In my defense, the design of those engines was, like, migraine-inducingly bad. I couldn't let them exist in the world, it was an offense against nature. And engineering. Tony Stark," he said, turning to Sam and sticking his hand out with no warning at all. Sam, who worked with people for whom mood whiplash was par for the course, took it.  
  
"Sam Wilson, nice to meet you."  
  
"When we have two minutes, you and I need to talk about your awesome jetpack," Stark said.   
  
"My awesome jetpack is at the bottom of the Potomac," Sam said. The wings were, at least. He thought the backpack part was probably buried in the ruins of the Triskelion.  
  
Stark rolled his eyes. "No, that was your regular jetpack, I'm talking about the awesome one I'm gonna make you."  
  
"Um. Great?" Sam said. Maybe his ability to boggle wasn't completely used up after all.  
  
"It will be," Stark said, with breathtaking, totally unconscious arrogance. "Who's gonna introduce me to our friend here?" His hand went into his pocket—of a suit that looked like it cost more than Sam made in a year—and Sam wondered if he even noticed the way Barnes tensed until it came back out holding a foil package. Of dried blueberries.   
  
"Barnes," the man said.   
  
Stark paused in the act of ripping the top off his package and looked up, his brown eyes sharp and intent. "You know, that's really interesting, because wasn't Capsicle's best buddy named Barnes? Back in the war I mean."  
  
"James Buchanan," Barnes said expressionlessly. "Don't call me Bucky."  
  
"Huh," Stark said. "And you're the last person to see him, right?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Great." He put his briefcase down on Sam's kitchen table and snapped it open. "Let's start with that."

* * *

They stopped for a rest break about four hours after he woke up the first time. The woman (he wished she would tell him her name, it seemed rude not to know it) cleared the guards from the back of the truck for him to use the bucket in his cage, which he thought was very nice of her, though it had been awkward with his hands still cuffed together. He dozed off again once they were back on the road, another thing that struck him as strange for reasons he couldn't articulate. He thought he wasn't used to being tired much, except that on another level he  _was_  used to it. It was a puzzle, and the longer he thought about it the more disturbed he got.  
  
"I'm hungry," he said finally.  
  
The woman got up again from her position at the far end of the truck and walked back, confident against the slight motions even in her heeled shoes.  _It's not as if I had any choice about learning to fight in them, you know,_  said a voice in his head—not her voice, it sounded...British? _English_ , the voice corrected, and he smiled a little, because it was just like her to insist on the distinction.  
  
Just like who, though?  
  
"Tell me your name again," the woman said.  
  
"Bucky Barnes," he replied, more certain this time since she'd accepted it the last time.  
  
"Where are you from, Mr. Barnes?"  
  
He thought about it. He didn't think he had an accent, but he guessed you never did think that about yourself. "Ah...New York? City." A second's pause, then, confidently, "Brooklyn."  
  
For some reason, that answer seemed to displease her.  
  
"What's the last thing you remember?"  
  
He blinked at her. "I remember looking at you. I was sitting in a chair. Then I woke up here," he said. Though now that he thought about it, that maybe wasn't true. There was another face, not one of the guards. Dark hair, too long, falling into winter-blue eyes; an expression of shock, horror—  
  
"Bucky!" he exclaimed, and pain spiked through the base of his skull like a stiletto. He cried out and clutched at it, nearly hitting himself in the face with his handcuffs. Images tumbled through his mind almost too fast to follow, Natasha leaning against a van with an absurdly huge rifle in her hands, Fury's sheet-covered form,  _On your left_ , the STRIKE team, his DC apartment, Peggy, the Chitauri—  
  
Finally he drew a deep, shuddering breath and glared out through the bars. "Who the hell are you and what do you want?"  
  
She glanced at her wristwatch. "Hail Hydra," she said casually, and gestured.  
  
Steve didn't really have anywhere to dodge; the third dart struck him in the neck and his vision washed over in black.

* * *

Steve woke up in the dentist's chair again, rubber bite guard in his mouth, and this time he started to struggle right away. Something creaked encouragingly, but at the same moment the woman's voice said, "He's awake, we can start." The whir made his breath catch and he yanked harder at the weak bond, but before he made any meaningful progress the halo was in place and the contacts touched his face. "No," he said, and that was all he had time for.

* * *

He opened his eyes to find he was in a cage, a near-cube just large enough for him to lie full-length on the thin mattress that filled its bottom. There was a bucket with him, and a pile of foil-wrapped bars and a jug of water. It seemed like these things should have disturbed him, but they didn't. Outside the cage, a woman sat in a straight wooden chair.  
  
"Good afternoon," she said. "Can you tell me your name?"  
  
He frowned.


	4. Chapter 4

For a few days it was pretty much the Barnes and Stark Show. Natasha added her professional opinion a few times. Clint and Sam mostly fetched food, made coffee, and tried to pretend they weren't worried.  
  
Clint had a bit of a fanboy moment when he realized Barnes was  _that_  Barnes, a reaction Barnes received with brief puzzlement and then disinterest, but Clint hadn't let it keep him from watching, very carefully. It was almost always from across the room, which was caution Sam heartily approved of; from across the room he might manage to get a shot off before the Winter Soldier could kill him, and even a supersoldier couldn't shrug off a .22 to the eye. However, watchful though Clint was, he wasn't hostile.  
  
On the third day, Sam asked him about it while they were on one of their food runs.   
  
"I know what it's like to do things you'd never want to do," Clint said. They were driving, courtesy of the car that Stark had casually presented the keys to, waving off thanks. It was tempting to get huffy about it, but on the other hand Stark could sure as hell afford an off-the-lot Cruze and Sam's former car was useful as a lawn ornament at best.   
  
Sam glanced at his passenger. Clint's voice was casual in the careful way people used when there was something big under the surface. "If you don't want to talk about it, I'm OK with that," Sam said. "I was just curious."  
  
"How much do you know about the Chitauri attack?"  
  
"Uh, pretty much just what everyone knows. Some crazy guy claiming to be a Norse god showed up with a bunch of ugly aliens on rocket sleds, you all fought them off."  
  
Clint nodded. "The crazy guy...I don't know if he was really Loki, like the guy the myths are about. But he had this thing, this staff. If he hit you with it right, it made you his." Sam could hear the loathing in his voice. "You were still you, you knew all the stuff you knew before, could  _do_  all the stuff you did before, but you...did it for him. Took his orders, tried to anticipate even.  You were loyal to him."  
  
Sam shuddered.   
  
"Yeah," said Clint. "Pretty much exactly like that, at least once I came out of it. I did things I hate the idea of doing. I spilled other peoples' secrets, killed people who trusted me. I tried to kill Nat."  
  
Sam tried to picture that and found he couldn't; the trust between the two of them was rock-solid, and it hadn't escaped his notice that the necklace Natasha wore was shaped like an arrow.  
  
"So I know what it's like," Clint went on, still evenly. "What Loki did to me, if it wasn't magic it'll do till magic comes along, and when it broke it was gone. What happened to Barnes, I'm a little less sure about. I believe he's devoted to Steve right now, but who knows if that will last? I'm keeping an eye on him. But I can't hate him."  
  
Sam nodded and settled his hands better on the wheel, trying to make his skin stop crawling. "He's not eating enough," he said, instead of letting himself dwell.  
  
"I don't think he can," Clint said. "And a lot of things seem to make him sick."  
  
Sam bit his lip, thinking of how much it would suck to have Steve's metabolism and not be able to eat enough, and all the reasons someone might end up that way. "We're getting extra plain rice."  
  
"Good plan," Clint said.

* * *

Steve had no idea how many days it had been, and even when he knew himself he had real trouble picturing what might have been before. There had to have been a before; men didn't just suddenly discover themselves full-grown and with the kind of skills he had—skills that had come as a surprise to him, when he'd woken up once before they managed to put him in the chair. He was sure he'd killed at least three of them before a dart had sunk into the meat of his right forearm as he tried to shield his face.  
  
In the moments between waking and when the chair enclosed him, he ran over his memories frantically, trying to fix them in his mind, but he knew he was failing; he could no longer remember the red-headed woman's name, nor why the image of a very old lady lying in her bed made him want to cry. The only names that came back to him reliably anymore were his own and Bucky's, and Bucky's face wavered erratically between clean-shaven laughter and a scowl with hair falling in his eyes.  
  
Steve's own beard wasn't growing much; he didn't remember ever shaving, so they must have been doing it for him while he was unconscious. It meant he didn't have even that rudimentary clock to keep track of his days.  
  
The woman, who he sometimes remembered was called Doctor Risman, always asked him if he knew his name, if he knew where he was from, and he began to anticipate the questions eagerly because they were usually what tripped his cascades of memory—painful as they were, and only moreso each time, they brought him back to himself as much as he could get.  
  
He had the feeling the periods of blankness, when he just accepted the world, were getting longer, and it terrified him.

* * *

"Can you tell me your name?" the woman asked.  
  
He stared at her, trying to fight down the feeling that disappointing her would have unpleasant consequences. But nothing came to him, and finally he had to shake his head. It was a relief when she smiled, though something in him was...disappointed too. "Take all the time you need," she told him.  
  
"I don't know," he said.  
  
"You're Nomad," she said.  
  
He turned that over in his head for a moment, wondering why it didn't seem to fit. But he supposed he couldn't complain too much if she gave him a name; it wasn't like he had another to counter with.  
  
"Nomad. All right."  
  
"Good. Now say: hail Hydra."  
  
"Hail Hydra," he repeated obediently.

* * *

He was alone in a room with a man. The man was handcuffed to a bolt in the floor and had a bag over his head, and from the sound of it he was crying. Through a gag, most likely; he hadn't said anything coherent.

Nomad loaded the pistol with the one round he'd been provided. When he was finished, he looked down at the shackled man and said, "Why am I doing this?"  
  
Doctor Risman's voice didn't come from anywhere in particular. "He's a murderer. This is justice."  
  
"I'm pretty sure we don't execute people by firing squad anymore," Nomad said. "And when we did it wasn't like this."  
  
"Kill him," the doctor said sharply, "or there will be consequences."  
  
Nomad looked into the upper corner of the room thoughtfully. "I don't like bullies," he said, and shot out the camera.  
  
Then he sat on the floor and waited for the knockout gas.

* * *

He woke with the peculiar lassitude in his limbs that meant he'd been in the chair. His hands were cuffed behind him. That was as far as he got before a booted foot slammed into his ribs. Nomad grunted and curled around the impact, but even as he moved another kick landed over his kidney. Reflex made him try to get to his feet, fight back, but his hands were fastened to the floor somehow and he couldn't rise more than a few inches.  
  
They were canny enough to keep out of range of his shackled feet. The strikes were designed to inflict pain more than injury, but by the time it was over he could feel the stab of a cracked rib every time he drew a breath and he wasn't sure he could have stood if he'd needed to. It wouldn't last, but that wasn't as much comfort as it might have been; the knowledge that nothing would fix it but time was familiar and wearying, though he couldn't remember why.  
  
He lay there panting until he heard the tap of Doctor Risman's heels. "You disobeyed, and we had to wipe you. This is what happens when you don't follow your orders," she told him cooly.  
  
Nomad stretched his face into a painful grin. "I could do this all day."  
  
"Disobey again and you'll have to," she said. "Wipe him."


	5. Chapter 5

Sam rolled to the side of the mattress and rubbed his eyes. The house held the deep quiet of the middle of the night. Stark had crashed hard around 2300 and they'd agreed it was better to let him get some decent sleep, but that meant Sam was using his vintage air mattress. To his credit, Stark had tried to protest, but Sam's mama hadn't raised him to make a guest sleep on the floor when there was a bed available. At least the man didn't snore.  
  
When Sam wandered out of the bathroom he headed for the living room instead of back to his mattress.  
  
Barnes sat in one of the straight kitchen chairs that he'd set in the living room, a spot with very good sight lines to the condo entrances. Natasha was on the sofa, apparently reading in the light of one table lamp. She looked up as Sam entered the room; Barnes continued to stare ahead but Sam knew better than to think he hadn't noticed.  
  
"I'm up for a while," Sam said. "Why don't you get some sleep?" Natasha gave him a look of mild surprise but he shrugged. "Seriously. I'm wired."  
  
She thought it over and closed her book with a snap. "Thanks," she said as she stood.  Sam wasn't ashamed to admit he watched as she padded down the hall to the guest room where Clint slept. Obviously he couldn't make a move, but that didn't mean he was blind.   
  
"You want coffee or something?" he asked on his way to the kitchen.  
  
Barnes shook his head, so Sam only fished out one mug. When he was done doctoring it he went back out and dropped into Natasha's vacated place on the sofa. He was about halfway through the coffee when Barnes said, "You don't trust me."  
  
Sam raised his eyebrows and swallowed his mouthful.  Of course Barnes had to have noticed they never left him alone with Stark, or the only one awake.  "You have to admit it's hard to trust a guy who tried to kill me less than two weeks ago."  
  
"You're right not to trust me," Barnes said. "I'll kill you all if it'll save Steve." Sam had not yet come up with a response to that when he continued, "I'll kill  _him_  if it will save him. I won't let them do this to him."  
  
"This?" Sam repeated. There were at least three possibilities just off the top of his head; he wasn't sure which ones Barnes had enough self-awareness to mean—and he felt an urgent need to know what was going to count as a fate worse than death.  
  
Barnes lifted his metal hand and spread the fingers. Sam felt a pang of pity, but Barnes said, "This is what people see, but this is nothing." He stared at the hand like he'd never seen it before, like it wasn't part of him. "Pain is bad, but pain passes." His eyes, pupils huge in the dim light, flicked up to meet Sam's. "I made myself forget things because it was worse to have them twisted. But some things I didn't forget in time, and only some of them are wrong, and  _I can't tell the difference_." It was the most emotion Sam had ever heard in his voice. "I won't let that happen to him too. Do you understand?"  
  
"I don't think so," Sam said. "Thank fucking God."   
  
Barnes gave him the ghost of a smile, and Sam could have wept because he knew what Bucky Barnes was supposed to look like smiling; everyone had seen that film clip in elementary school. "You understand enough," Barnes said.

* * *

The next morning, Stark found a lead.

* * *

Nomad was pleased that he got to walk to the truck by himself. He went handcuffed and surrounded by guards, and had to get into the cage at the end of the short trip, but that he walked on his own feet was a sign of his reliability.  
  
Doctor Risman seemed edgy, worried or maybe irritated. He didn't like it.  _Knock it the hell off,_  he thought.  _It ain't good for 'em to see the captain like this._  Then he frowned, because Doctor Risman was not a captain. He didn't think she was military at all, though she was his CO in every way that mattered.   
  
Once he was in the cage, the guards piled boxes into the rest of the truck to hide him, and he sat down to wait.

* * *

The trip in the truck was long, interrupted only by a muffled conversation that he decided was a border crossing. Some hours later the truck stopped and was unloaded. Nomad's cage was transferred from the truck to the hold of a cargo airplane.   
  
The flight was even longer. By the end of it he was painfully hungry.

* * *

The new facility looked a lot like the old one, down to being built to the same plan. Nomad thought that was pleasing efficiency, though of course there were different details, the result of people customizing in use.  
  
Once he was settled in his quarters (the word "cell" drifted through his mind and he ignored it) he had to wait. ( _This life, you're either bored out of your skull or scared out of your mind. It ain't like in the pictures._ ) It was tempting to pace but he'd learned not to waste energy, especially when he was hungry. It had been hours more by the time he heard the tap of Doctor Risman's heels.  
  
She stopped on the other side of the bars, flanked by guards. One of them held a tray; Nomad only realized his attention was fixed on it when Doctor Risman said, "Look at me."  
  
"Sorry, ma'am," he said, annoyed with himself. His physical needs were less important than careful attention to his CO.  
  
"That's all right," she said. "I understand, but I need you to focus first." She held a folder out to him through the bars. Nomad accepted it and flipped it open to reveal a black-and-white picture of a man. "Describe him."  
  
"Caucasian male, mid-twenties, dark hair, eyes probably blue," Nomad said. "No scale to indicate height but proportion suggests above average. He's military, a specialist. Sniper. He's—"  
  
Doctor Risman made a click of her tongue and he looked up. His heart sank at her disappointed expression. "Put that down," she told the guard with the tray, and the man did. "I don't know how long I'll be busy." She turned and walked off down the hall, her guards trailing her.  
  
Nomad lasted almost an hour before he tried to reach the tray. It was three inches beyond his fingertips.

* * *

He was alone in a room with a man who was handcuffed to a bolt in the floor. Nomad couldn't tell for sure but he suspected the man was gagged under the bag that covered his head; he had said nothing coherent.  
  
He loaded the pistol with the one round he'd been provided, and waited. Hunger clawed at him; he couldn't completely stop his hands from shaking.  
  
"This man is a murderer," Doctor Risman's voice said. The hooded man's head shook. "Kill him. Then you can return to your quarters."  
  
Nomad swallowed and forced himself to focus. "Ma'am, this seems very irregular."  
  
"Sometimes unconventional methods are necessary," she replied. Her tone softened. "There will be a meal waiting for you in your quarters. Better to get this over with."  
  
Nomad thumbed back the hammer. The prisoner made a strangled sound of fear. "Who did he kill?" Nomad asked.  
  
"His second-in-command found out he was selling weapons," Doctor Risman said. "He killed her to keep her quiet."  
  
Nomad said, "You have thirty seconds to make your peace with God." He counted them off silently. At thirty, he pulled the trigger.


	6. Chapter 6

Stark flew them to South Dakota. The plane had tiny private cabins; Sam retreated to one before they even took off. Truth be told, he hated flying in a plane, and he needed some time alone.  
  
That plan went pretty well for about fifteen minutes before someone tapped on the door. He yanked it open hard enough to almost override the friction stops to find Natasha standing outside. "Can I come in?"  
  
"Can I stop you?"   
  
"Yes," she said with a shrug.  
  
Sam sighed. "Then yeah, you can come in." He turned and settled himself back down on the shelf-bed; Natasha shut the door behind her and sat in the chair there was just enough room for, her legs curled neatly under her like a cat. She looked like a graduate student in her jeans and short jacket. The arrow necklace glinted at her throat.  
  
"So?" he asked.  
  
"I thought you might appreciate it if someone else was camp counselor for a little while," she said. "This is the best chance we're likely to get."  
  
"Camp counselor?"  
  
"You spend a lot of time keeping people on task, managing them," she said. "That's not a bad thing—in fact it's very useful, especially on an op like this, where we're personally involved. If we let our emotions take over, someone's going to screw something up, and it'll probably be fatal." She tilted her head and made an airy gesture. "But it's not easy to maintain without a break."  
  
"So you thought you'd offer to let me cry on your shoulder."  
  
She smiled. "I thought you might try to punch me, actually."  
  
Sam huffed and said, "Woman, do I look stupid to you?" Her smile twisted into a smirk.  
  
They sat in silence for a few seconds, listening to the hum of the engines.  
  
"It makes me sick," Sam said finally. "And not just...I mean, I  _like_  Steve. I followed him into a damn crazy scheme because it needed to be done, because he said it was the right thing to do, but it's not just that he's Captain America, you know? It's not just that he's a good guy. The thought of Hydra turning that snarky bastard into something like Barnes, it makes me sick."  
  
"But that's not all, is it?"  
  
"I'm supposed to say Gabe Jones was my favorite Howling Commando," Sam said, letting the words fall into the quiet. "And don't get me wrong, brother was awesome.  And obviously I looked up to the Captain. But Bucky Barnes was the one I wanted to  _be_. He was the one who always had Cap's back." Natasha nodded. "Even if he comes out of this alive, I don't see how he'll ever be okay again. And I am saying this in my professional capacity, Natasha: I don't even know where to  _start_. He told me he'll kill Steve to keep him from ending up like him. What do I do with that? Seventy years. Seventy  _years_. What the hell am I supposed to do with that? I'm just a guy who jumps out of perfectly good airplanes." He knuckled his eyes, but he knew she'd seen the tears. "I don't think there's any way to come back from that, and if he can't..."  
  
"Before I went to work for SHIELD I did a lot of things that can't be forgiven.  It would have been easier to decide I was a monster and never try to be different," Natasha said. "I came back from that, because someone made me want to. Barnes wants to."  
  
"I don't know if wanting to's enough," Sam said, hearing despair in his own voice.  
  
"His chances are better with you than without you," said Natasha.  Sam didn't know if she realized she touched the necklace as she spoke.

* * *

They suited up well out of range of the place, an industrial park that had seen better days in the suburbs outside of Sioux Falls. Stark presented Sam with a backpack, with the admonition that it wasn't "the awesome one", just a replica of the old one "so don't get used to it." The Iron Man suit was even cooler in real life than on TV, which Sam wouldn't have believed possible.  
  
Half a mile out, Stark's voice came over the coms. "So I don't want to alarm you guys," he said, in an offhand way that didn't hide concern, "but either someone in there has jamming good enough to jam  _me_  without me being able to tell." He took a deep breath. "Or there's no one there."

* * *

Barnes stood next to the computer on the rolling table with an expression on his face that Sam would call 'glaring' if he didn't know that was what the guy looked like pretty much all the time. "The chair was here," he said, with a flick of a gesture at the bolt-holes in the floor. "Steve was here." Without warning he hauled back his metal fist and punched it through the monitor.

* * *

"Her second-in-command found out she was selling weapons. She killed him to keep him quiet."

Nomad thumbed back the hammer.

* * *

He didn't have to sleep as much as he knew most people did, and it was boring in his quarters, which was how he slipped into the habit. He developed it into a ritual, almost a game. He'd think of something, the smell of his dinner or the color of Doctor Risman's blouse or an overheard name, and feel around for an impression in his memory that was related to it, another color or a melody, even a texture. If he found one he'd use it as the next basis. His longest chain was 47 associations by the morning that Doctor Risman came to his quarters with the folder.  
  
Nomad felt his heart sink. The doctor handed him the folder through the bars and he flipped it open to find a black-and-white picture of a man.  
  
"Describe him," Doctor Risman said briskly. He tried not to let it show that he found the lack of social graces annoying and focused on the picture.  
  
"Caucasian male, mid-twenties, dark hair, eyes probably blue," Nomad said, ignoring his rising unease. "No scale to indicate height but proportion suggests above average." He drew another breath and stopped.  
  
"Yes?" Doctor Risman said.  
  
He swallowed and said reluctantly, "I know him. At least, I've seen him." He knew instantly that it was the wrong answer, though Doctor Risman's face did not do anything as obvious as frown.  
  
"I see," she said. "Come with me."  
  
One of her guards unlocked his door and he trailed her, half a step back from her right shoulder, through the central room (only his quarters were occupied) and down the hall. He knew where they were going, without any clear idea of how he knew, and found himself grateful for her relatively slow pace.  
  
When they came into the room that held the chair, Nomad checked for a moment. He couldn't help it. The artifact itself was innocuous, a reclining leather-covered chair that might have belonged to a dentist if not for the sturdy restraints built into the arms and the array of electronics mounted behind the head. But it frightened him.  
  
"Sit," Doctor Risman said. It took him long enough to make his feet obey that she had to repeat the command. Every step felt like forcing himself through mud and he shuddered at the touch of the leather. He placed his arms in the restraints and a technician snapped them closed, then presented him with the bite guard.  
  
"I want you to think about the man in the picture," Doctor Risman said, as the chair began to whir. Nomad drew a too-fast breath, and another, as he tried to control his mind enough to obey. The eyes  _were_  blue, he was sure of it, and as the contacts came down towards his face he thought in a voice that wasn't his own  _It'll be OK, just breathe, you'll be OK_ , and then the lightning arced through him and there was nothing but pain.


	7. Chapter 7

Barnes let Tony take the computer, but it was clear he wasn't happy about it—not that he was ever happy, as far as Sam could tell, and who could blame him? But Sam had the feeling that the existence of the computer scared him, a feeling that mostly came from watching how Natasha shifted when Barnes snarled, "I don't care what you think you can get out of it, Stark, you're not messing with Steve's head."  
  
"I'm planning to fix Steve's head, if it's all the same to you," Tony replied. "For that matter, we might be able to fix yours."  
  
"I'll slit my own throat first," Barnes said flatly. Beside Sam, Natasha let out a tiny breath.  
  
"Let him waste his time," she said, in an offhand tone that made Barnes and Tony break out of their staring match in surprise. "Techs don't believe anything until they beat their heads against the wall for a while. He'll figure it out eventually."  
  
And OK, Sam wouldn't have taken that tack—it wouldn't have occurred to him, honestly—but it seemed to work. He figured assigning Tony to a category that didn't make big decisions was probably better for everyone's continued use of all their limbs, too. Still, there was a long pause before Barnes said, "Fine."  
  
He stalked out of the room. Sam didn't realize he was considering following until Natasha murmured, "Clint will make sure he doesn't get too far."   
  
"Isn't flouncing a little adolescent for a ninety-year-old?" Tony said, turning to the rolling table that the computer and ruined monitor sat on.  
  
"Tony, you're a moron," Natasha said. "Think about what that computer means to him and be glad he still thinks you're useful enough to not kill for threatening Steve like that."  
  
Tony threw her a sideways, startled look and then horror flashed across his face, so fast Sam almost wasn't sure he'd seen it, but Tony wasn't actually a completely self-centered asshole, he just pretended to be because it was easier. "We need to go back to New York, I have better stuff there," he said, in a jovial tone that was really cold rage. "These people are just smart enough to be worth killing."  
  
Sam blinked and revised his opinion of Tony Stark from  _willing to kill if attacked_  to  _actually dangerous_.

* * *

The bed in the guest suite of the Avengers Tower—Sam wanted to laugh his ass off about that but didn't have the energy—was too soft and Sam didn't give a damn; he fell into it fully dressed, barely coherent enough to get his shoes off first.

* * *

He didn't remember much explicitly, but some things had a resonance that told him he'd done them before, possibly many times. Standing alone in a room with a bound man was one of them.  
  
Though the fact that the man's head was bare seemed unusual. Nomad didn't let his hands falter as he loaded the pistol with the one round he'd been provided, but he couldn't stop examining the prisoner with the edges of his vision. The man was Caucasian, in his mid twenties, blue-eyed and dark-haired with features that made the phrase "black Irish" float into Nomad's mind. He grimaced. Such thoughts with no context were useless at best, distractions.  
  
Nomad thumbed back the hammer. The prisoner's eyes were huge with fear and he mumbled through the gag. Nomad swallowed, unsure why he hesitated. The moment drew out until Doctor Risman's voice came over the speakers. "Nomad, you have your orders."  
  
He raised the weapon.  
  
Lowered it again.  
  
"I'm sorry, ma'am, I don't think I can," he said.  
  
"You understand that there will be consequences," Doctor Risman said. She didn't sound angry, only disappointed, but it made Nomad's chest clench.  
  
"Yes, ma'am."  
  
"Secure the weapon," she said, and Nomad ejected the round and caught it in the air. The prisoner slumped, probably relief, as Nomad set the empty gun and its ammo on the floor. Then he went to the door.  
  
It wasn't a long wait. When the door opened Doctor Risman stood on the other side of it with a cardstock folder in her hand. She offered it, and Nomad took it, flipping it open to reveal a black-and-white photo of another man.  
  
"Describe him," she said briskly.  
  
"Caucasian male, mid-twenties, dark hair, eyes probably blue," Nomad said, feeling that resonance again. "No scale to indicate height but proportion suggests above average. He resembles the prisoner." He frowned in thought.  
  
"Anything else?" Doctor Risman asked.  
  
Nomad considered it. "Is he one of the guards?"  
  
"No," she replied, but there was a slight smile on her face. "All right, come with me." He trailed her, half a step back from her right shoulder, grateful for her relatively slow pace. Nomad checked for a moment when they entered the room that held the chair; he couldn't help it. This had resonance too, the gut-deep terror that the innocuous artifact engendered.  
  
"Sit," Doctor Risman ordered him.  
  
"Ma'am," he said, trying not to let his voice crack.  
  
The look she turned on him was calm, but his heart sank. "I'm sorry, Nomad, but you were warned."  
  
"Yes, ma'am," he said, and forced himself to cross the few feet to the chair. He flinched at the feel of the leather, placed his arms in the restraints. A technician snapped them closed and presented him with the bite guard. He started to hyperventilate as the whir began behind his head.  _Just breathe, buddy,_  he thought, and then the thought and the resonance that accompanied it were ripped away.

* * *

The prisoner was a man in his forties, with dark hair and brown eyes and an absurd goatee. "You have thirty seconds to make your peace with God," Nomad said.

* * *

The prisoner was young and red-headed, probably attractive when she wasn't weeping in fear. "You have thirty seconds to make your peace with God," Nomad said.

* * *

The prisoner was staring at him, his blue eyes wide with fear. Nomad thumbed back the hammer. "Remove his gag," Doctor Risman's voice came over the speakers.  
  
Nomad frowned. That order did not have resonance. But he did as he was told, and the prisoner spat the wadding out and drew a shaky breath. "Steve," he said. "Steve, please."  
  
He raised the weapon.  
  
Lowered it again.  
  
"I'm sorry, ma'am, I don't think I can," he said.


	8. Chapter 8

Sam felt more than a little guilty about having shoved off his cases on his co-workers, but he was well aware that he wasn't going to do anyone any good by trying to go into work like this; he just wasn't capable of compartmentalizing something so huge. Fortunately his boss was very clear on what happened when someone called and said "I can't handle it right now" and was forced to come in and try anyway.  
  
There was also the fact that he had the biggest veteran-trauma case of his life right there in the Tower with him—though Barnes flatly ignored any conversational gambit that wasn't directly relevant to his self-imposed mission of finding Steve, and Sam still had not the faintest fucking clue where to start. He settled for insisting that Barnes eat and sleep on something resembling a normal schedule, with the distinct feeling that he only got away with it because Barnes was capable of recognizing biological necessity.  
  
Which was, to be fair, better than some people Sam had worked with, but also probably had something to do with the Winter Soldier being required to maintain combat effectiveness and that just wasn't a train of thought Sam wanted to ride on because it led to a deep desire to break things.  
  
There followed about a week much like the first, though Sam and Clint didn't have to do food runs any longer; Tony Stark had people for that. It wasn't as much of a bonus as it at first appeared, because it meant there was nothing to do but think. Sam spent a lot of time with Clint and a mild, perpetually rumpled man named Bruce who, Sam gradually realized, was actually the Hulk.  
  
He assumed that at some point his life was going to have to hit maximum weirdness and stop getting crazier.

* * *

"OK, here's what we've got," Tony said. He gestured and a rotating globe sprang into being in the middle of the lab. Four glowing spots pulsed red on it, widely scattered. "The truck that pretty much had to be carrying Steve went to Dryden Regional Airport in Ontario. From there the trail gets muddier, because Dryden's not big but the plane headed for Vancouver and wouldn't you know there was a weird computer glitch not long after it got into YVR's air traffic control pattern. We had to go by arrival times and type of aircraft." He waved at the globe. "Those four places are our possibles. They all have suitably shady ownership histories and ongoing activity. I have 'em ranked in order of probability, but there's not honestly much to pick between, difference of less than ten percent top to bottom."  
  
"That's not how probabilities work, Tony," said Bruce, in his usual diffident way.  
  
Tony rolled his eyes. "I'm simplifying, OK?" Bruce looked amused but shrugged agreement. "So the problem here is, while we are totally capable of reducing any one of these bases to rubble, if we pick the wrong one the right one's bound to hear about it and maybe move him again."  
  
"Unacceptable," Barnes said. He looked even more tightly wound than usual, as was normal when he had to enter Tony's lab. "They've had him more than three weeks already, Stark. We need to get him out."  
  
"I'm not arguing with you, Robocop, I'm telling you  _I_  don't know how to pick," Tony said. "You, on the other hand, worked for these people." Sam winced. Barnes didn't visibly react. "So tell me: where's Hydra keeping Captain America?"  
  
"Give me a flat map," Barnes said. Tony didn't bother gesturing, but the globe unwrapped into a plane that hung in the air. Barnes stared at it.  _Let him not be wrong,_  Sam thought.  _If he's wrong it'll kill him_.

It occurred to him that he was thinking of Barnes as the kind you saved.

Finally Barnes walked to the map and tapped the air. That spot continued to pulse while the rest faded, and the map zoomed in. "Here," he said.   
  
"That's actually _in_ Bogotá," Bruce said. "I think I better sit this one out."  
  
"You did fine in a big city before," Tony said, wheedling.  
  
"When it was under attack by aliens already," Bruce replied dryly.  
  
"Come on, Big Green, it'll be great!"  
  
"Do you really want me smashing things on a hostage rescue?"  
  
"Argue later," Barnes said, in a tone that brooked no argument at all. "Start prep  _now_."

* * *

The prisoner spat out the wadding. "Steve," he said. The name made a resonance in Nomad's mind. The man swallowed. "Steve, please don't do this." He sounded afraid, though not as afraid as Nomad might have expected.  
  
"You have thirty seconds to make your peace with God," Nomad said.  
  
"Oh fuck," the prisoner moaned. "Steve, come on. You know you're not gonna do this. You know it's me, right? You know I'm your friend. We were friends when we were kids, remember? It's me, Steve, it's Bucky."   
  
Nomad frowned; that didn't seem right. The prisoner's eyes widened a bit, with fear or desperation, and he talked faster, the words spilling over each other. "Shit, please, I swear it's me. Please, please Steve, you don't want to do this. I'm your friend, it's me, I swear it's me, it's—"  
  
Nomad pulled the trigger.   
  
In the aftermath of the shot, Doctor Risman's voice seemed quiet. "Well done."  
  
Nomad looked down at the body. With the face hidden, it wasn't disturbing, the details of its build producing no resonance. It wasn't a back he recognized, insofar as he recognized anything much. He wondered idly what had happened to him, to erase the life he must have lived before. There had to have been a before; men didn't just suddenly discover themselves full-grown. His hands and body knew how to do things. The gun had felt familiar.  
  
The door slid open to reveal Doctor Risman, smiling. Nomad smiled back in relief. "Well done," the doctor repeated.   
  
"Ma'am, if I may ask: who's Steve?" Nomad asked.  
  
"That used to be your body's name," she said. "And to answer your next question, 'Bucky' was a friend of Steve's. The prisoner resembled him, and was trying to use that resemblance to stop you. He knew you don't remember, thought he might be able to fool you." She looked disapproving, though Nomad thought she was also satisfied with how well he'd performed.  
  
Nomad thought it over. "What happened to me? To...Bucky."  
  
"You were both in a very bad aircraft crash," Doctor Risman said. "You survived, but you've had extensive head trauma."  
  
"And Bucky didn't make it," Nomad said. Head trauma might explain the resonance; messing with the brain could do all sorts of funny things. It was too bad his companion hadn't survived. It might be nice to have someone to pass the time with. 

"I'm afraid we lost him," Doctor Risman agreed. "Now come with me."

Nomad trailed her, half a step back from her right shoulder. At the junction, they turned left, which led away from his quarters, and he fought down unease. "Bucky's an odd name," he said, to cover it. "Sounds like the kind of thing you pick because there are six Jims on the block already." 

The steady tap of Doctor Risman's heels faltered for a moment. "Some people have odd nicknames," she said neutrally.

They were still down the hall from the room that held the chair when Doctor Risman stopped short and put her hand to her ear. All the guards were suddenly much tenser than they'd been instants before, and Nomad had a second of worry that he'd done something inappropriate. "How?" the doctor demanded, and then spoke over any reply, "Never mind, it's not important. Keep them out of the center block for as long as possible." She started walking again, faster, and Nomad lengthened his stride to keep up, considering what he'd heard. There was only one explanation that fit the facts.

He checked for a moment when they entered the chair room; he couldn't help it. "Ma'am," he said, and fought not to let his voice crack. "If we're under attack, let me help."

She turned to face him. "You'll help better if you do this," she said. "Sit."

It took him a long second to force himself to cross to the chair and he shuddered at the touch of the leather seat. A technician closed the restraints over his arms and offered him the bite guard. "I need him a blank slate," Doctor Risman said. "Up to full."

Nomad started to hyperventilate as the whir began behind his head. The halo rotated into his field of vision and as the contacts came down to cover his face he thought  _Just breathe, Steve,_  in a voice that wasn't his own.

* * *

When he struggled awake the room was empty except for two guards who looked spooked. His limbs were heavy with the peculiar lassitude the chair left behind, but it was irrelevant because he was still restrained. He spat out the bite guard. "What's going on?" he asked. He heard a crash, muffled by distance or walls or both, and started yanking at the arm restraints.

"The Avengers," one of the guards said, sounding panicky. The other guard gave him a venomous glance. 

"Don't talk to the asset, dumbsh—"

The wall exploded.

In the gap were three points of blue-white light that made a resonance in his mind. The guards shouted and fired into the dust, and with a rising whine one of the points emitted a bright blast that bowled them both over. They landed hard and didn't twitch. Nomad struggled harder.

A red-and-gold robot stepped through the wall. The points of light were its palms and the center of its chest. It scanned around the room. "Guys, I found him, center wing," it said, its voice a little tinny but very naturalistic, and far more pleasant than its forbidding mask suggested. "Cap, it is damn good to see you." Suddenly the front of its head...retracted somehow, to reveal a man's face. Not a robot: a suit of armor. The man had dark hair and brown eyes and an absurd goatee, and he made resonance too.

"Who are you?" Nomad demanded, yanking at the restraints. They creaked, but he wasn't getting out of them before the suit could fire, that was for sure. 

"Ooooh, that's not good," the guy said. "And also I'm a little insulted you could forget me. Barnes, hurry it up." He gave Nomad a slightly twisted smile. "We're on your side, I promise, hold on for just a minute and all will be revealed."

"It had damn well better be," Nomad growled.

Less than a minute later Nomad heard running feet in the hall. A man and a woman appeared through the hole, both of them in black combat gear. The woman was young and redheaded and attractive enough that it should have been distracting, but Nomad found his attention fixed on the man: Caucasian, mid-twenties, above-average height, dark hair and blue eyes and features that made the phrase "black Irish" float up. He wore a metal sheath of some sort on his left arm and his expression was trying to be blank as he crossed the room. Nomad thought that he should flinch as the metal-covered arm reached for his head, but he didn't, and there was a wrenching squeal as the man pulled loose half the halo. Then he met Nomad's eyes, searching for something. The resonance shrieked, stronger than it had ever been  
  
"Steve," he said. "It's me. It's Bucky."  
  
Nomad frowned. "Who the hell is Bucky?"


	9. Chapter 9

From down the hall, Sam heard Barnes' voice rising. "Get him out of there!"  
  
Tony's reply was softer, in a questioning tone.  
  
Then he was close enough to catch Natasha, saying, "Of course not, they were made to hold  _him_."  
  
"Inside's different from outside," Tony said, but by the time Sam stepped over the crumbling lip of the (honestly impressive) hole in the wall, Tony was bending over Steve.  
  
Steve, obviously pissed as hell, sat in a chair that looked like nothing so much as the kind of thing you'd find in a dentist's office, at least if your dentist was old-school enough to prefer leather over vinyl. It was only the details that were disturbing, like the complicated electronic rig mounted on a rack behind it and the fact that the arms had restraints built into them.  
  
Barnes was standing next to the chair, holding what appeared to be a piece of the electronics in his left hand and, if the crackling sounds were to be believed, slowly crushing it. Natasha was still near the wall, watching with her arms crossed.  
  
The expression on Steve's face made Sam say, "Hold on just a sec." Everyone stopped and looked his way, even Tony. He addressed Steve directly. "Are we gonna have an issue once you're out?"  
  
Steve's frown got fiercer. "I'm Nomad," he said. "I have no rank or serial number."  
  
Natasha said something sharp in Russian; Sam doubted it was a comment on the weather. Tony recovered from the moment of shock and said, "OK! We're not capturing you, we're rescuing you. Sorry for the confusion." But he took his hands away from the arm restraints.  
  
"You are not," Barnes said, quietly but with feeling. "Your name is Steven Grant Rogers. Captain. I don't remember your goddamn serial number. You are Captain America." The piece of electronics gave up the ghost and the two halves of it fell to the floor as Barnes made a sound that had probably started as a laugh. His voice rose with every word. "I can't—this is—Jesus Christ, Steve, you can't make  _me_  be the one who remembers! Your mother's name was Sarah. You wore newspapers in your shoes. You let them do this to you the second my goddamn back was turned and I—" He cut himself off, turned on his heel, and strode out, his boots crunching on the rubble. Sam glanced after him but there were bigger fish to fry.  
  
"Look, man—Nomad. I get that you don't know us. But we know you." Steve just stared at him. "Give us a week to prove it."   
  
Steve's brows drew down as he visibly considered it. Sam held his breath. Having seen Steve in action, Sam was not happy about their chances of restraining him without hurting him if he tried to fight. Neither the Iron Man suit nor Barnes' arm were exactly subtle instruments.  
  
"I'll give you three days. After that, no promises."  
  
"Fair enough," Sam said. Beside him Natasha's shoulders unclenched the slightest bit.

* * *

They talked Tony out of rigging the place to, as he put it, 'implode' by pointing out that it was actually on the fringe where the city of Bogotá became its suburbs. He refused to get out of his suit before they were back on the plane and in the air, and Sam had gotten pretty good at noticing when the man winced and rubbed at his still-healing chest. Steve settled down with a tablet Tony gave him and the instruction to google the Battle of New York. The shirt Tony'd tossed him was too tight, but as far as Sam had been able to tell that was Steve's natural state.

Sam went and sat across from Barnes, and dealt with the dead-eyed stare for about thirty seconds before saying, "He'll be all right. He'll remember."

"You don't know that," Barnes said expressionlessly.

"I do, actually," Sam replied. "Because  _you_  did." Barnes' eyes widened and he looked  _at_  Sam instead of through him. Sam shrugged. "They had you way longer than they had him. They did their freaky Nazi evil-science crap to you how many times? And you remembered. So he will too."

Barnes clamped down on the desperate hope that crossed his face almost instantly, and Sam silently cursed, once again, the evil sacks of shit who'd made it so Barnes was petrified to ever be seen to have a thought of his own.

"You should talk to Natasha," Sam said, after a long pause. "I get the feeling she has some experience with this stuff."

Barnes didn't react, or reply. But just as Sam began to think of getting up and going to faceplant in one of the cabin beds, Barnes said, "We have Steve back. You don't have to—" He cut himself off and turned his head.

"Don't have to what?"

"Don't have to pretend," Barnes said, his voice perfectly controlled. "You don't have to pretend to care what happens to me anymore."

Sam smiled. "Are you kidding? Man, you were my favorite Howling Commando."

* * *

Nomad had to admit that there was essentially no way his new acquaintances could be running a put-up job.   
  
There were thousands of television clips from the Battle of New York, from different angles and in qualities ranging from too shaky to make anything out to shots that looked like they'd been deliberately framed for a movie, in both color and black and white, and including Stark, Romanoff and Barton though not Wilson or Barnes.  _Commentaries_  on the Battle numbered in the millions, in both video and text. And plenty of it showed the face he knew was his, even under the cowl.  
  
In the two years since, there were more videos and any number of still pictures. In most of them he was wearing combat gear—though thankfully, it lost the red and white stripes pretty quickly and turned into something that might actually be practical to fight in.  
  
Not all of it made resonance, but enough did. Nor was it remotely practical for anyone to have faked it, not in the sheer quantities he found.  
  
So: these people had been his comrades, and were almost certainly telling the truth about having rescued him. He was really Steve Rogers...for all that Rogers' story was unbelievable on its face.  
  
That did not mean he necessarily wanted to stay with them.  
  
For one thing, it looked like they and he had been working for some supremely bad people—unknowingly, but still. Romanoff filled him in a little, though he could tell the whole topic pained her. He found her a little disconcerting, because she treated him like a beloved, exasperating brother and though the teasing made resonance, the fact that it came from a woman did not.  
  
Barton and Wilson were both pretty restful and willing to talk about baseball. Bruce Banner, who had a suite in Stark's extravagantly ugly tower, was smart as a whip and perpetually mild-mannered, though Nomad thought he was hiding one hell of a temper not very far beneath the surface. Stark himself was annoying and far too convinced of his own genius, but generous with his apparently-unlimited wealth and not actually a bad person. Nomad wondered if the man had  _any_  idea how lucky he was that Miss Potts had agreed to get anywhere near him.  
  
Barnes was...a little more problematic.  
  
Speaking of unbelievable stories, there was Barnes'. Childhood friend of Steve Rogers, lost in action (in  _World War Two_ ), captured and brainwashed by Hydra (who Rogers, let's not forget, had been unwittingly working for), conditioning broken by a chance encounter with Rogers while trying to kill him. There were pictures of James Barnes from the War, and the modern Barnes was either the same person or someone surgically modified to look just like him, as long as you accounted for the fact that he was much too thin. It was like something out of a comic book, and Nomad only believed it because the evidence was right in front of him.  
  
Metaphorically in front of him, because Barnes had a catlike ability to take up a position where he could see Nomad but Nomad couldn't see him. (It meant Nomad had to be very circumspect about his pilferings of table knives and plastic pens, and wasn't at all sure Barnes didn't see them anyway.) Nor did Barnes willingly talk to him, just hovering in the same room whenever possible.  
  
Nomad's plans to leave the Tower were complicated by the computer that ran it on Stark's behalf, a computer that was disconcertingly  _alive_. But if they insisted on treating him like a friend, they'd have to let him go outside sometime. So he spent most of three days in the Tower, discussing batting statistics and rolling his eyes at Stark, planning.  
  
The third morning he woke up with a headache, annoying because his parole was up and he wanted to be on the ball for making his break for it. But he knew someone would get prematurely twitchy if he didn't come out for breakfast, so he put on enough clothing to be decent and rode the elevator to the common area. Romanoff was there already, with Barton staring sulkily into the depths of a huge mug of coffee beside her—the man didn't seem to be an early riser by inclination.  
  
Nomad had enough time to acquire a cup of coffee of his own before Barnes entered the room, ignoring everyone's greetings. Nomad's eyes seemed to gravitate to Barnes' face. He couldn't look away, even though Romanoff was talking to him. He couldn't have told you what she was saying if you paid him. Barnes stopped walking and stared.  
  
Pain spiked through the base of his skull like he'd been stabbed with an icepick. His coffee cup fell from nerveless fingers.  
  
"Bucky," he gasped, and the last thing he heard was all three of them shouting his name.

* * *

Steve swam towards consciousness like he was fighting a riptide. He could hear voices. Slowly they began to make sense.  
  
"...from the  _ears_ , Bruce, that is not in any way a good sign," Tony was saying.  
  
Bruce, much closer, said, "I get that, but I keep telling you I'm not actually a medical doctor. Steve, are you awake?"  
  
Steve pried his eyes open to find Bruce hovering, well within his personal space but carefully, blatantly not in the way of Steve standing up. From...one of the sofas. In the common space of Stark, no  _Avengers_  Tower. "'M wake," he muttered, unable to form better words. "Did anyone get the number of that truck?"  
  
There followed several minutes of ensuring that he really was awake, culminating in Tony asking him who was president. "Roosevelt," Steve said. Everyone stopped dead and he widened his eyes innocently. "Theodore."  
  
"He's back!" Tony exclaimed.  
  
"I think I am," Steve said, and sat forward to rub his hands over his face. "I feel like I was run over by a tank, though." He looked around the circle of his friends until he found Bucky, standing well back from everyone else. "From what they've been telling me, they wouldn't have known to look for me without you. Thanks." He smiled, though it felt shaky. "You always did get me out of trouble, Buck."  
  
Bucky nodded. "You remember," he said.  
  
"I do. Even what happened while I was...with them. You all assaulted the base."  
  
"We totally did," Tony said enthusiastically. "It was pretty awesome, if I do say so myself."  
  
"Do any of you know what happened to Doctor Risman? She was about Natasha's height, brown curly hair, she looked a little like Peggy?" And he was nauseatingly certain she'd been playing up that resemblance—the better to control you with, my dear.  
  
Everyone traded glances and shook their heads.  
  
Steve clenched his teeth. "Guess I know what I'm doing with the next few months."

* * *

"I need sleep."

"Bucky." Steve started to heave himself up but Sam grabbed his arm.

"He's not kidding, Steve," he said quietly.  "He's been up for almost three days at this point.  You can talk to him tomorrow."

* * *

It was long past sunset when JARVIS said, "Captain Rogers, I have a message for you."  
  
Steve, who had spent the day and evening being poked by people with ever-more-esoteric medical degrees, sighed and slouched in his chair. "I'll deal with it tomorrow, JARVIS." He was looking forward to taking a very long shower and then sleeping in the absurdly opulent bed Tony had furnished the absurdly opulent suite with...though he suspected he was going to be awake trying to figure out what to say to Bucky for much longer than he'd like.  
  
There was a polite pause. "If I may, sir, the message is from Sergeant Barnes."  
  
"Oh," Steve said, puzzled. If Bucky wanted to talk to him, why didn't he just knock? "All right, let me hear it."  
  
"Yes, sir." After a moment of dead air, Bucky's voice said, "Steve, don't look for me."  
  
Steve sat bolt upright. "JARVIS, when was that recorded?"  
  
"Eleven hundred seventeen, Captain." JARVIS paused. "I apologize, but my protocols did not allow me to transmit the message before the time the Sergeant specified. He was listed as a guest."  
  
"He  _was_."  
  
"Sergeant Barnes left the premises immediately after recording the message and has not returned."  
  
Steve felt his hand clench. "Damnit, Buck," he muttered, because it was that or punch something.  
  
"I have taken the liberty of informing Sir," JARVIS said. "He wishes to know if you would like me to alert the rest of the Avengers currently in residence."  
  
"Yes," Steve said. "And tell them to bring their A-game." 

* * *

"I don't care. I'm going to find him."  
  
After a long second, Sam said, "When do we start?"


End file.
